Pakistan Opens Crypto Licensing Portal, Sets September 5 Deadline for Existing Firms
Pakistan’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA) has opened its formal licensing portal and given every crypto platform already operating in the country until September 5, 2026 to apply for a No Objection Certificate (NOC) or stop serving Pakistani users.
The deadline comes under Section 70 of the Virtual Assets Act 2026, the law that created PVARA and moved Pakistan from years of informal, ambiguous crypto policy toward a structured supervisory regime. Existing service providers, exchanges, custodians, brokers, and other firms already active in the market before the law took effect, are the ones on the clock; new entrants follow a separate two-stage process.
PVARA Chairman Bilal bin Saqib confirmed the rollout directly:
The framework itself is broader than a single license type. PVARA’s regulations define 10 distinct license categories, spanning exchange operation, custody, broker-dealer services, advisory, lending and borrowing, derivatives, asset management, transfer and settlement, token issuance, and mining, each with its own conduct, prudential, technology, and anti-money-laundering requirements. A firm offering multiple services needs to qualify under each relevant category, not just register once and be covered across the board.
The two-stage path for new applicants starts with either a regulatory sandbox or a Section 19 No-Objection Certificate, followed by a full license application only after the company has formally incorporated in Pakistan. Existing firms skip straight to the NOC step, but the September 5 date is a hard cutoff either way, not a soft target: firms that miss it are required to halt operations until they clear the process.
The move puts Pakistan on a similar track to jurisdictions like the UAE and Hong Kong: formal, activity-specific licensing rather than an outright ban or continued ambiguity. That shift carries extra weight given where Pakistan sits in the market: the country ranked third globally, behind only India and the United States, in Chainalysis’s 2025 Global Crypto Adoption Index, with recent estimates putting its user base above 20 million people. For firms that have operated for years in that gray zone, the message from PVARA is blunt: get licensed by September 5, or get out.
Curious how crypto licensing regimes differ across countries? Explore more in our Bitcoin Academy.